The Greeks elaborated several theories of vision. According to the Pythagoreans , Democritus , and others vision is caused by the projection of particles from the object seen, into the pupil of the eye. On the other hand Empedocles , the Platonists , and Euclid held the strange doctrine of ocular beams, according to which the eye itself sends out something which causes sight as soon as it meets something else emanated by the object.

Florian Cajori, A History of Physics in its Elementary Branches (1899)